Six-word Saturday

Learning to be a kid again.

 

I recently started writing a middle grade novel, and I'm having a wonderful time with the process! It's so much fun to read books for eight- to twelve-year-olds and remember what it was like to be a kid all those (many) years ago. I'm also lucky to know a few kids in this age group, and their input has been invaluable. So far, this book has been a joy to write!

 

Wishing you all a happy, fun-filled Saturday. ☺

 

This really takes me back...

Happy Tuesday!

Recently, I heard Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time," and I was immediately transported back to 1984. I was twelve and starting the seventh grade, nervous, I'm sure, about all the changes life would bring now that I was attending classes in the high school. (Our high school and junior high students shared the same building.) It was a year of many firsts: first school dance, first "boyfriend," first kiss, first taste of independence... I don't think I'd ever want to go back to those years, but I'm happy to say I lived through them. ☺

What song takes you back every time you hear it?



Wishing you all a Tuesday filled with wonderful memories. ☺

Dancing queen



Put on your dancing shoes.
Image courtesy of Mei Teng Wong, rgbstock.com

I was a junior high dancing queen.

Well, not really. Far from it, actually. I couldn't keep a beat to save my life. In fact I still can't.

But my lack of dancing ability didn't stop me from going to all the junior high dances. Dad, my reluctant chauffeur, would drop me off at the glamorous dance hall (really the slightly malodorous elementary school gym), and I would flail around to the music with the best of them. I didn't know what I was doing, but I always had fun.

I have so many great memories of those dances. Here's a short piece I wrote about one of them:

Junior high dances: kids packed into the elementary school gym, DJ blasting music, disgruntled teachers stuck with chaperoning duty wandering around, pushing couples out of dark corners and eyeing the dance floor. I was there that night with Matt, the "love" of my seventh-grade life, and the gym was hot and the pop was warm and the DJ played "Mony Mony," some of the kids chanting the non-PG audience participation parts until Mr. S, that squat, toadish English teacher, pulled the plug on the song (and nearly the dance) and then glared at us from his post by the door.


Ah, memories!

Nowadays, I'm not much of a dancer. I'm too self-conscious of my lack of ability and usually avoid the dance floor at all costs, even though my poor husband just loves to get out there. I sometimes wish that I could go back to those junior high days when I was either clueless about my lack of skill or just didn't care that I couldn't feel the rhythm. Luckily for me, though, it seems that my daughter, little ballerina that she is, intends to keep my dancing dreams alive.

Finally, just because I can't resist, here's Abba with "Dancing Queen":



Lyrics here.


Did you attend your junior high or high school dances? What memories stand out?

Z is for Zenith

Once upon a time, there was a television--a Zenith, to be exact. It was a small TV, but it served a big purpose: entertaining Dana the College Student. It spent its days on a much-too-big TV stand in her much-too-small dorm room, dutifully fulfilling its destiny.

Television-watching freedom at last!
Image courtesy of Rebecca Merrett,
rgbstock.com

I loved that little thirteen-inch Zenith. My parents had bought it for me around Christmas time of my senior year. They had given me a choice between a microwave and a television, but there really was no contest. I figured I could always go to the cafeteria for meals or eat cereal or ramen noodles cooked in my hot pot in my room. What I couldn't always do was watch what I wanted to on the floor's one TV. There was just too much competition, and unless I wanted to wrestle for my right to watch Beverly Hills, 90210, I knew it was best to steer clear of the common room.

Looking back, I'm surprised I managed to get any homework done once I started sharing my single with the Zenith. I guess it helped that I didn't have cable and was able to pick up only one network, NBC. Still, NBC featured some great programming back in the "olden" days of 1993 and 1994, and I remember watching Seinfeld, ER, Mad About You, and F•R•I•E•N•D•S--all great shows that I still love today.

After I graduated from college, I packed up my TV and went on to graduate school. That tiny TV looked even smaller in my brand-new apartment, but it remained a treasured possession. In fact, I guess you could say I had formed a sentimental attachment to that Zenith. Did I refuse to go out with my friends in favor of staying home with my TV? Of course not. I'm sentimental, not antisocial. Still, that TV had been with me through a lot: it had helped me stay awake during all-night cram sessions, consoled me after fights with boyfriends, helped take my mind off worries that would threaten to keep me from sleep... I used to say that I had two possessions I would do my best to rescue if there was ever a fire: my Skylark and my Zenith, both of which offered me a much-needed escape from life whenever I needed it.

But one day I noticed that the Zenith wasn't working as well as it once had. It turned fickle at the worst possible moments--like during the many but crucial "Will-this-patient-live-or-die" scenes on ER. Sometimes it displayed a picture but had no sound; sometimes there was sound but no picture. I feared I was losing it (the TV, not my mind, although I have friends who would beg to differ). I started babying it, talking to it, cajoling it, even giving it a little slap when it wouldn't listen to me. I didn't know it then, of course, but, for better or for worse--and minus the slapping--that TV was helping me hone my future parenting skills.

No matter my efforts, though, the Zenith continued to decline, yet somehow I couldn't part with it--not even when I finished graduate school and packed up a U-Haul to move 1,300 miles away to Nebraska to teach. Yes, that old, broken-down, works-only-part-of-the-time-but-still-isn't-quite-dead TV made the trip with me.

I know what you're thinking: I was crazy to keep the thing, right? Why didn't I just go out and buy a new one? That would have been the logical solution, I admit, but I've always been much too sentimental about things, and I have an especially hard time parting with anything given to me by someone I love. To add to that, I was moving far away from home and family, from the Midwest to the Plains, from security to uncertainty... No wonder I wanted to cling to something from my past.

So I moved that TV into my new (rented) house. It wasn't long before it wouldn't work at all, but instead of tossing it out, I boxed it up and put it in the basement, where it wouldn't have to see its replacement and where I could still keep my memories. It wasn't until nearly seven years later, as we were packing up yet another U-Haul, this time for my move to Wisconsin, that I allowed my dad to throw that Zenith away. I couldn't do it myself, and somehow it seemed fitting that one of the people who gave it to me was the one to get rid of it. I guess that having it live in the basement for all those years made me realize that I could live without it--and more importantly, that living without it didn't mean that I would be living without the memories.

And that was a big realization right there. I had come to my zenith in regard to my Zenith, just as we are now at the zenith of this challenge. I'm sad that the challenge is over; I had so much fun meeting other bloggers and enjoyed writing to a theme. I'll save the rest of my thoughts for my reflections post on May 7, but I want to say now that I appreciate each and every one of you who takes the time to read my thoughts. Reading your comments has been the highlight of my day. Thank you!




So how about you? Have you ever owned a Zenith or formed a sentimental attachment to an object? (Please tell me I'm not the only one!)

Harvesting words

Happy Sunday!

Since today is a day off from the Blogging from A to Z Challenge, I wanted to share a post I wrote on July 11, 2011. Like the posts I've been writing for the challenge, this one is about one of my favorite things: collecting words.

I'll see you tomorrow with the letter Z!



"The words! I collected them in all shapes and sizes and hung them like bangles in my mind." ~Hortense Calisher, Extreme Magic

Like most writers, I'm in love with words. I collect them. Whenever I hear or read one I particularly like, either because of its sound or its meaning or the thoughts or memories associated with it, I write it down, filing it away in my collection. Sometimes I bring these words out when I want to freewrite, using one as a prompt and seeing where it takes me. Other times I simply read my list, enjoying the sound and beauty of the language.

One of the first words I absolutely adored was identification. I was very young, but I remember reciting that word over and over again, spelling it out loud in the car and during dinner. When I couldn't spell or say it aloud--when I was brushing my teeth, for example--I would recite it over and over in my mind. I loved--and still do now--the cadence of the word, the way it feels on the tongue; the rhythm it makes as it's spelled, all of the letters pairing up so neatly: id-en-ti-fi-ca-ti-on. I must have driven my parents crazy...

Do you harvest words? What's your earliest memory of a word you love?

T is for Tulips

I always thought tulips were pretty flowers, but they were never my favorites. I preferred roses, lilies, carnations...even marigolds and pansies. Tulips, while beautiful, never even made my short list of flowers I absolutely adored. But one day that changed, all thanks to my then four-year-old son.


Photo by Vera Kratochvil
Courtesy of Public Domain Pictures

My son first spotted tulips about a year ago at the grocery store, and he begged to "buy" me some. I didn't need them or particularly want them, but there was something about the look on his face that just melted my heart, so I gave in to his request. He jumped up and down with his excitement, and I watched as he examined all the bunches carefully, trying to decide which one was his favorite. Finally he handed me a bunch of orange tulips, a big grin spread across his tiny face. "These are for you, Mommy." My heart melted again.

Since that moment, tulips have moved up high on the list of my favorite flowers. It's not so much the tulip itself that I love but the way my son reacts when he sees them and how proud he is to share them with me. When I look at them now, I see my son and his big heart and handsome, smiling face. I never want to forget these moments.

My son continues to choose tulips for me each spring when they're available in our local grocery store. Right now I have a vase full of yellow ones on the kitchen table, and I believe he said that the next ones are going to be the pink ones he saw last Friday night.

I can't wait!

Before I end this post, I wanted to share this short piece I wrote one day after coming home from a shopping trip with my son:

He points out the tulips whenever we pass them, shakes my arm and urges me to look at the colors--the reds and pinks and oranges, the greens and blues and mahoganies, the deep purples and their more subtle and muted lavender sisters--and he presses me forward until we stand at the front of the display, he, clasping his hands and staring with wide, child eyes and I, watching him, the flush in his cheeks and the way he bounces on his feet, the light inside him breaking through to shine upon those flowers and us all.



Do you have a favorite flower? Is there a story behind your love for it?

I may never understand

Today's 100 words:

I listened to the song again last night--Evanescence's My Immortal. You said it reminded me of you, back when our lives were breaking apart, back when nothing seemed certain for us anymore: the present, the future. Even our past felt like it somehow didn't exist--or maybe it was that it no longer seemed like time we had shared. Whenever I listen to this song, the one you say describes how you were feeling when it all came crashing down, I never completely understand. We wouldn't have been in that place if it hadn't been for you.

Fearing the unknown

Today's 100 words:

When I moved to Nebraska, I was terrified of tornadoes. I'd never experienced them in Northern Michigan and was afraid I was putting myself in prime tornado territory. I guess we always fear the unknown. As it turned out, in the six years I lived there, I experienced only two tornado warnings, and no tornadoes ever touched down. But the fact is that the unknown is frightening. I fear a lot of things, I think, because they're out of what I consider my normal. I get that nervous feeling in my stomach--the same feeling I woke up with today.

It never really goes away

Today's 100 words:

While going through some old emails yesterday, I found several messages my ex-husband sent me during the months before our divorce. Rereading them brought back a lot of difficult memories that I thought I'd hidden away in some back corner of my mind or had at least pushed aside for enough time that I could begin to forget. But the emotions--pain, anger, resentment--my ex expressed brought me right back to those moments, right back to those days our life together broke apart. I guess the pain never really dulls, no matter what good things life brings afterward.

Happy 5th birthday to my little boy!

Today's 100 words:

The sun was like this the day you were born--warm and welcoming, really an anomaly here, where February usually seems so cold and gray. Of course when I woke that morning, I didn't know how special the day would be, how surreal--and frightening--it was to hear my doctor say, "Go to the hospital. It's time." Then hours later as you lay on my chest and looked at me with those eyes so like my dad's--that was the happiest I'd ever felt, my heart swelling, my mind unable to comprehend that you, perfect you, were actually mine.

Silence

Today's 100 words:

The word "silence" has transformed for me over the years. When I was younger, I equated silence with loneliness, with being left out, with hours spent reading or watching television with no one but myself for company. Now that I'm a mother, silence isn't lonely but desirable, something I seek out each day, getting up hours before the kids awake, carving out quiet time every morning and evening--time when I can be alone, time when I can hear myself think, time away from the chaos and noise that fill the rest of the day. Silence truly is golden now.

Capturing memories

Today's 100 words:

Sometimes my children say what I think are wonderfully brilliant things, and I always rush to write those things down so I don't forget them. I have slips of paper all over the house inscribed with things the kids have said or stories about the cute and funny things they've done, and one of these days, I'll compile them all in the journals I bought for that purpose. Capturing memories is important to me because my feeble mind has a tendency to forget, and if I don't write things down, they'll be lost forever. I don't want to forget a moment.

Lost!

Today's 100 words:

I have a tendency to get lost when I'm driving. A couple of years ago, I wanted to take my son to the children's museum downtown. I'm not from here, and I rarely venture out of the suburbs and into the downtown labyrinth of one-way streets and traffic, so I Googled the directions and set off, hopeful that we would get to our destination. I missed a left, however, and couldn't see a way to turn around in the traffic. Somehow I ended up miles away, near the lake, and only a frantic call to my husband got us home again.

Those were the days...

Today's 100 words:

I long for the extensive intellectual discussions about literature and art that I used to have with others when I was in graduate school. We all had the same focus--the same love--and we could pitch words and ideas and theories with no fear of boring the people around us. We could share our research and not fear that the listener's eyes would glaze over with boredom or that he would clean his nails and stare at the wall in apathy as we talked. I share these things online now more than off. I miss being face-to-face.

Sentimentality

Today's 100 words:

When my daughter was born two years ago, my generous friend, who has two daughters of her own, gave me a ton of beautiful, hardly worn clothes, and she continues to give me clothes as her girls outgrow them. Two months ago, she gave birth to a boy, and now it's my turn to return her generosity by giving her some of my son's clothes. But when I opened one of the clothes bins and looked at the clothes, I wanted to cry: so many memories... I know I need to do this, but my sentimentality is making it hard.

My own sun

Today's 100 words:

In graduate school, I dated a guy I thought was the love of my life. When he said he didn't want to be with me anymore, my whole world crumbled--I couldn't eat or sleep... Even one of my professors remarked later--after I'd finally gotten over the guy--that I had been looking gray and sick for a while and he was glad to see me looking healthy and happy again. My mistake was not loving the guy but letting him rule my world--allowing him to be my sun. I truly hope my daughter never does the same.

Friendship

Today's 100 words:

It's sad how some friendships just end as if there was never any importance or significance to them in the first place. Yesterday I was reminded of a good friend I met in college. Beth was smart and kind, the type of person who was always there when I needed help or advice. I tried to be the same for her. However, one day--just like that, it seemed--the friendship was over: she wouldn't talk to me; she moved away when I came near... To this day, I don't understand what happened--but I know I still miss her.

Looking back

Today's 100 words:

I think most people can look back on their lives and find a few cringe-worthy moments they wish they could forget. I know I can. But I can also recall moments when I did stupid things that could have had a very different--and very bad--outcome. There was the time I accidentally ran a red light at a busy intersection. I truly didn't see it, but sometimes I consider how bad the ramifications could have been. There were other times as well, too many to count, but I think about them a lot and am thankful.

Letting go

This morning's 100 words:

If I spend my life looking back at the past, dredging up regrets from long ago, exhuming them from the memory graves they deserve to stay buried in, then I'll miss the present, the things of today--of this moment--that won't be allowed to become memories of their own because I'll be too busy focusing on the yesterdays and the should-have-beens and the why-didn't-Is to even see the people in front of me, too destroyed by the long ago to notice the now. To keep the present, I have to let go of the past.

What we remember

This morning's 100 words:

It's funny which things in life we hold in our minds forever and which we forget. I don't remember all the particulars of the bigger events like childhood birthday parties, vacations, and high school graduation. However, I do recall the details of several everyday, mundane occurrences, such as watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show with my mom after supper one night while we waited for my dad to come home from work. I guess this shows that our everyday lives--our normal, day-to-day living--hold value and significance and meaning, perhaps more than we ever knew.